Fighting escalates in Kashmir

Published: Wednesday, July 07, 1999

KARGIL, India {AP} Indian army troops captured more peaks Tuesday and Pakistani shells blew up an oil tanker as battles in Kashmir raged despite a pact made by President Clinton and Pakistan's prime minister to push for peace.

In Pakistan, a hostile opposition and defiant militant groups waited for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's return from a summit in Washington, where he agreed to take concrete steps to restore the 1972 cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

Both nations tested nuclear weapons last year, raising fears of a wider war.

Sharif said he would ask the Islamic guerrillas to abandon their positions, but the rebels balked Tuesday, pledging to die rather withdraw from the craggy Himalayan Mountains around Kargil, inside the Indian-controlled Kashmir region.

For the past two months, Indian forces have waged a blistering campaign to dislodge hundreds of Islamic guerrillas who crossed the cease-fire line in May and entrenched themselves in stone-and-concrete bunkers overlooking India's only highway in northern Kashmir.

There has been no slackening of nearly ceaseless shelling from both sides. The Indian military, reporting some of the bloodiest fighting yet, said 55 mercenaries and nine Indian soldiers were killed in the all-night battle that ended Tuesday.

Indian army spokesman Col. Bikram Singh said India destroyed 43 bunkers that had been used as guerrilla hideouts and found the bodies of 11 Muslim fighters dumped in a shallow pit in the area.

From the Pakistani side, dozens of shells soared over the jagged hilltops, aiming at 12 Indian 105 mm guns but hitting one oil tanker truck and damaging another.

The resulting ball of fire lit up the mountainside and emitted swirling plumes of black smoke, trapping 30 Indian army trucks on the road.

Pakistan acknowledges its forces are trading constant artillery shelling and targeting the highway, but says the fighters on the peaks are Muslim militants over whom it has no control.

Muslim insurgents said Tuesday they would rather die than give up the fight.

"There is no question of a retreat. ... If we don't fight now, Indians will push forward in our area," said Mohammad Shoaib, a Muslim rebel.